Okay Geek Farm
UK Pub fined for Illegal Download on its WiFi
Ricardo Trejo
£8,000, a little over $13,100, was the number on the bill handed to a British Pub owner after someone used his public WiFi to illegally download content, leaving him with the copyright infringement charge. Now this isn't fair at all, to put the blame on this sole guy for the actions of others, but it has to be pointed out that it's common practice by ISP's and such to insert lingo as 'any illegal action done on your internet connection, public or private, is against the terms of service in which you are liable for any damages accrued by such activity.' So in reality, no matter how unfair it may seem, this guy by the contract is at fault and has to pay up.
It's hard to find where I stand on this whole issue, since I've openly used torrents in the past, although, I have a personal policy to only use my own internet connection for such practices. Now this pub owner was only trying to find a way to bring in customers, which places like Starbucks and McDonalds have done already -, offering free WiFi to its customers - but you don't see the RIAA or MPAA going after them now do you?
We all know that the age in which we live in has been the golden age of digital piracy. There truly are no consequences for illegally downloading content at the moment, with people like the the music and movie industry backing off and letting ISP's take care of the perpetrators; most companies cutting the service off after 3 offenses. This is the short term answer to the problem, but it's like putting a band-aid over cancer really. New security policies, better and more precise ways of catching offenders in the act, and/or advanced piracy techniques that aren't detectable - such as old school direct downloads, or something like that could solve this problem in a jiffy. I really don't care which comes first from my point of view. I just hate to see innocent people taking the blame for something some WiFi Pirate did - yes, I just made up that word. Sounds awesome doesn't it?
From what's known so far this seems to be the first case of its kind in the UK, but we've heard of this sorta thing going on more commonly now in the US.
[CNET]
